system enabled verified low v1.0.0

gzip

File compression utility using the DEFLATE algorithm for reducing file sizes with optional decompression and stream processing.

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gzip {stdout} {decompress} {force} {help} {keep}

📎 stdout 📎 decompress 📎 force 📎 help 📎 keep

gzip {stdout} {decompress} {force} {help} {keep}

Sandbox: execFile · Timeout: 300s

Capabilities

filesystem.compress.gzip

filesystem.decompress.gzip

filesystem.compress.stream

filesystem.archive.compress

Parameters

Name	Type	Required	Default	Description	Aliases
`stdout`	string	No	-	write on standard output, keep original files unchanged	`-c`, `--stdout`
`decompress`	string	No	-	Set the decompress parameter	`-d`, `--decompress`
`force`	file	No	-	force overwrite of output file and compress links	`-f`, `--force`
`help`	string	No	-	give this help	`-h`, `--help`
`keep`	file	No	-	keep (don't delete) input files	`-k`, `--keep`
`list`	string	No	-	list compressed file contents	`-l`, `--list`
`license`	string	No	-	display software license	`-L`, `--license`
`no-name`	string	No	-	do not save or restore the original name and timestamp	`-n`, `--no-name`
`name`	string	No	-	save or restore the original name and timestamp	`-N`, `--name`
`quiet`	string	No	-	suppress all warnings	`-q`, `--quiet`
`recursive`	string	No	-	operate recursively on directories	`-r`, `--recursive`
`rsyncable`	string	No	-	make rsync-friendly archive	`--rsyncable`
`suffix`	string	No	-	--synchronous synchronous output (safer if system crashes, but slower)	`-S`, `--suffix`
`test`	string	No	-	test compressed file integrity	`-t`, `--test`
`verbose`	string	No	-	verbose mode	`-v`, `--verbose`
`version`	string	No	-	display version number	`-V`, `--version`
`fast`	string	No	-	compress faster	`-1`, `--fast`
`best`	string	No	-	compress better	`-9`, `--best`
`synchronous`	boolean	No	-	synchronous output (safer if system crashes, but slower)	`--synchronous`

Artifacts

Type	Description	MIME	Schema	Trust
`filesystem.archive.gzip`	Gzip-compressed file	application/gzip	1.0.0	verified
`filesystem.file.raw`	Decompressed file content	-	-	verified

Contract

Inputs

filesystem.file.raw

File to compress

filesystem.archive.gzip

Gzip archive to decompress

Outputs

filesystem.archive.gzip

Compressed gzip archive

filesystem.file.raw

Decompressed file content

Side effects: filesystem_write

Workflow Edges

Produces

filesystem.archive.gzipfilesystem.file.raw

Consumes

filesystem.file.rawfilesystem.archive.gzip

Resource Profile

Resource	Value
CPU	high
Memory	32 MB
Network	none
Disk I/O	high

Examples

Compress a file

gzip file.txt

Decompress a .gz file

gunzip file.txt.gz

Compress with maximum compression

gzip -9 largefile.tar

Keep original file when compressing

gzip -k file.txt

Stream compression in a pipeline

cat largefile | gzip -c > output.gz

View compressed file contents

zcat file.txt.gz

Documentation

Gzip — File Compression

Gzip (GNU zip) is a widely used compression utility based on the DEFLATE algorithm. It provides a good balance of compression ratio and speed, making it the standard for text compression on Unix systems.

Compression Levels

Level	Flag	Speed	Size Reduction	Use Case
1	`--fast`	Fastest	Lowest	Quick compression, already-compressed data
6	(default)	Good	Good	General purpose
9	`--best`	Slowest	Highest	Archival, distribution

Pipeline Usage

# Compress a tar archive
tar cf - directory/ | gzip -c > archive.tar.gz

# Decompress and extract
gunzip -c archive.tar.gz | tar xf -

# Search compressed files without decompressing to disk
zcat access.log.gz | grep 'ERROR'

# Count lines in compressed file
zcat data.txt.gz | wc -l

# Stream compression over pipe
mysqldump database | gzip -c > backup.sql.gz

Compression Ratios

File Type	Typical Ratio	Notes
Text/Code	60-80%	Highly compressible
Logs	70-90%	Very high compression
JSON/XML	70-85%	Repeated patterns compress well
Images (PNG)	0-5%	Already compressed
Archives	0-10%	Usually already compressed